Putting the RADical into the RADS

I will be attending the RADS (Recruitment Advertising Awards) on Thursday and am looking forward to catching up with friends and clients as well as seeing the creme de la creme of our industries work over the last year. The RADS sees itself as the Oscars of our industry it 'rewards the brightest people and the best recruitment marketing in the business.'

Whilst I am sure I will definitely see old friends, clients and as always, have a great night, I'm not so sure that I will definitely be viewing the best recruitment solutions our industry has to offer. Don't get me wrong, the winners will no doubt be benefactors of some very creative concepts and executions, that may deserve to be recognized and rewarded in some context. However, I have some doubts as to whether the actual winning entry will have been the best example of recruitment marketing our business has to offer and indeed the most effective in its category.

Why do I have these doubts? especially when there are 14 RAD judges who its safe to say whether from personal experience or simply reading their profiles definitely know a thing or two about recruitment and advertising.

Well, here's where I will get straight to the point. Creativity is fundamental to the success of an advertising campaign, that's obvious. However you can have an excellent creative concept and execution but if its not put in the places where your target audiences are, then it simply will not be an effective recruitment solution. Similarly in terms of effectiveness, there doesn't seem to be the importance given to this area that there should be and needs to be. You can have the best creative with the best media research and planning, (or so your planning tools and approach would lead you to believe) however, if the campaign simply does not result in the actual hires, enhancement of employer brand or whatever the specific objective may be, this is not the best example of recruitment marketing, why? because the solution has not worked. There is too much focus on the creative concept and execution of a traditional press ad and not enough credence given to the other areas such as media planning and media tracking and optimisation that go to ensuring our clients receive an effective recruitment marketing solution.

Broadband has killed Broadcasting but Brought us Accountability

When you think that the RADS was established seventeen years ago, why would media choice and effectiveness be part of the equation? Seventeen years ago the gambit of media choice was more limited. You placed your press ad in the recruitment sections of a newspaper or industry journal and hey presto! you would received a deluge of suitable/non suitable response, why? because thats were job seekers looked for a job. The media landscape was a much simpler place where consumers and candidates had a finite number of media channels to access and were subject to messages and advertising being pushed to them as they simply had no other choices. The advertiser was King and the more creative you could be, the more of an edge (if not one of the only edges ) over your competitors you would have.

Today we live in a digital age which has fragmented the media landscape and its audience beyond recognition. We have so many media sources to choose from and so many devices from which to receive it that we can consume our very own personalized media selection free from mainstream taste and opinion. It is much more difficult to broadcast our message to a very wide audience in the traditional sense e.g. through the most popular TV channel in a nation with four TV channels (or in the recruitment pages of a local or national newspaper). Instead with the niche opportunities and tastes that Digital TV and the Internet etc offers consumers, we as advertisers have the opportunity to be very targeted or shall we say we can much more easily 'narowcast'.

As one would expect the jobseeking audience has fragmented with recruitment pages in newspapers and journals not being able to guarantee the audience they once were been able to. Yet we still need to hire our people, raise employer brands.............. but here's the thing, the digital world whether it be through all the options of online advertising, web builds, mobile phones, IPods, Digital TV etc enables us unlike any time before, to be truly interactive and effective in our recruitment marketing solutions.

In 2007 we are faced with an challenging media landscape that requires us to be innovative and creative in how we engage and communicate with both active and passive jobseekers. How can we persuade our audience to 'pull' our message in a digital age where the candidate/consumer rules the roost and decides what they want to digest? We simply cannot rely on a really cool and incisive recruitment ad in a newspaper to deliver the goods. Media research and planning tools can give us insight as to where our audience actually are thus achieving the 'cut through' to candidates that is required to communicate our recruitment message. (creative concept and execution is just as critical online as offline).

To get to the point, excellence in media planning needs to be recognised and rewarded as more and more it is and will be critical to success.

In addition to making sure the media planning choices we make, engage with our audience, we should all be benefiting from one of the truly great attributes of the digital age – its accountability. For the past six years I've worked with clients and waxed lyrical about the accountability of the Internet, to the point where people took the p*ss out of me for using the word 'Accountability' so much when I spoke about online advertising (usually mimicking a bad Irish accent in the process).

Whilst there is so much room for improvement if not actual take up of online advertising tracking (another blog, another time) what we have found and will find even more so, is that the digital age is stimulating accountability in other media platforms as they realize that they need to compete with their digital counterparts to prove effectiveness.

Digital will and is actually perpetuating best practice in accountability in the wider recruitment media landscape. This can already be seen with the Intelligence and MI (Management Information) offerings of certain agencies. Clients have bought into the benefits of online advertising ROI and want to see what other media is and is not delivering for them. All media like never before is being held to account.

Perhaps the RADS can say, they are a creative awards ceremony and they have never pretended to be anything other than that. Perhaps they will say (quite rightly too) that 'media choice' and 'effectiveness' are two areas/criteria that need to be filled in in the actual entry form. However it is clear that creative is paramount, with the inclusion of these two areas being there to serve the purpose of showing a 'wider picture', padding out the story, proving that it actually appeared in a media at some stage.

To me, when you set out your stall as the Oscars of an industry you cannot limit the main criteria of success to one (albeit important) criteria. If you do you are not reflecting the work and true worth of an industry. We are currently working in the most exciting period that our industry has experienced. It is what all we interactive/digital bods hoped for and believed would happen, even in the years when people simply dismissed our work as a whimsical Internet fad.

To reflect this new age we need an industry awards ceremony that reflects the actual work that goes into making the best recruitment marketing solutions that this industry has to offer and has been offering over the past few years. We need an awards criteria that encourages clients to embrace best practice in media planning and accountability tools, we want criteria that reflects reality, stimulates change and provide aspirations and inspiration to our industry.

We require an 'Oscar' in all categories that rewards and reflects the pillars that underpin an effective recruitment solution; Media Research and Planning, Creativity, Accountability and the fuel of successful ongoing communication (whatever the 'Age') - Innovation.

Discuss.

Comments

[Alex]

you saying that the Onrec awards aren't the answer then?

;-)

[Matt Alder]

Sinead I couldn't agree with you more. I think the issue is actually easily addressed logistical but much more difficult for some people to take on board conceptually. Logistically if the RADS are all about creativity then they should market themselves as just that. Whether that's the award ceremony as a whole or individual categories it doesn't really matter. Creativity (in old sense of the word) is certainly something to be celebrated and certainly should get its time in the limelight. Equally though, clever media planning and results orientated accountable strategies (did I really just invent that phrase!!) should also get the recognition they deserve. It happens in the product marketing world so why shouldn't recruitment be the same.

All sounds simple so far doesn't it?

Well here is the problem. The majority of agencies in our space don't measure results properly (see my earlier post "The next big thing...") or bother about accountability, either because they don't know how or if they do I can only presume they are scared to admit it. For someone who has grown up in digital media I just can't get my head round this and I'm very glad I work for an agency for whom measurement is key. Perhaps at the end of the day it's a chicken and egg scenario.......if people start giving awards for strategic, measurable media planning then maybe they will be a rush of agencies adopting new practices in order to get a gong!

Whatever happens the market has changed and it's awards need to reflect that change if they want to stay relevant

[John Salt]

Are you saying that the RADS should stand for "Really Awful Decisions on Spend" then?

Couldn't agree more with your thoughts on having awards that champion media planning and delivery of results.

This blog raises several interesting points, in addition to thoughts on The RADS - and the CIPD awards/Onrec etc - regarding the jobs 'widget' that could be placed on anyones blog/website; absolutely the UK should have one, preferably many so you have a choice. As a minimum that should allow you to search for all jobs from a job board/client, and increasingly will need to serve up relevant jobs by location/skill/sector in context with the editorial/discussion - who kwows maybe a UK job board has one on the way?

In terms of independent research, measurement and tracking of results this is long overdue - are you all saying that NORAS doesn't do it for you? What should it be, who should commission it, how often and to what end?

Congratulations on this blog - great to see one for this industry, great to see your views and frustrations - see you at the RADS......

[Alex]

You make a good point, well quite a few of them, however you got any ideas about how you could measure the success in any such awards? I kinda get your beef with the awards celebrating “creativity” then claiming to recognise the “brightest people and the best recruitment marketing”, but I don’t think there’s an awards ceremony put on anywhere in the world that could be called modest in its self-promotion.

Over the years I’m sure we’ve all witnessed some plain and downright crap ads held up best in class creatively, and when you add to that those the ads that have been misrepresented (posters that are suddenly entered as adverts or quarter pages that suddenly become full page colours) as well as the plethora of ads placed by agencies that we know generated bugger all response but are placed as “award hopefuls” – there are enough issues to be taken with the creative evaluation process of such awards.

I personally hate the way that there’s so little integrity in the evaluation of these things – a great ad in the product advertising world will win time and time again, but when it comes to judging in our industry there seems to be huge discrepancy from awards to awards. Creativity is of course highly subjective, but in an industry of professionals there should be more consistency of subjectivity? I wonder if such awards should be evaluated by Industry Peers alone? Still – at least they’re trying and have more integrity than the likes of the ONREC “how many tickets can I sell?” awards.

So if the RADs (and to a lesser degree probably the CIPDs) stop pretending to be a reflection of the b-all and end-all of recruitment advertising and accept that whilst creativity can be glorious there’s some more fundamental work that goes on behind the scenes that should at least be acknowledged, then that’ll be a significant improvement. However, I have to admit to being at a loss as to how exactly you feel we’d evaluate and recognise excellence in media planning.

Would it be best planned campaign for a £10k / £15k / £25k+ media spend? And is the judging criteria then the response figures? How can that be fair – Google or Microsoft could probably recruit a team of web developers for £1,536.57, whereas, I dunno, Rentakill based in Rotherham (I have no idea whether they are or not) would have to spend considerably more to get on the radar of potential developers, let alone convince them that toilets and rat catching is a sexy line of web development to further their career in. I really have no idea.

Just like everything else, award ceremonies that purport to represent our industry have to move beyond yesterdays ad in a paper environment. Best Website is of course a no-brainer step in the right direction (albeit a contentious one – nowhere is “form vs. function” being more tested), but I never get Best Innovation (maybe I’ll be enlightened and enthused this year)? To my mind Best Campaign has to come with a central web / digital element as a pre-requisite in this digital age, but perhaps now is the time for a statistics based award if the RADs really are about all that is good and great in recruitment advertising.

I have a feeling that the CIPD (as you’d hopefully expect) are edging the “Integrity” stakes in rec ad awards land, so maybe this is the platform where you explain how you can best (and fairly) evaluate creativity in planning and compare something that recruits 50 engineers to another campaign that recruits 25 Physicists or 105 Sales People.

You also have to bear in mind one important thing – you and Matt (and a couple of others) – you’re out there. I know a thing or two about Online / Digital recruitment, may even give you a run for your money in regards to some elements, but TMP, and, since your recent moves, Mediacom & Barkers respectively, are the exception rather than the rule. You are the Statistical / Accountability Pioneers in our space. Some of the rest of us are trying to get to grips with it all, many (maybe most) are either playing Ostrich or too busy doing what they have done for the past 15+years to even start to have a clue what your blithering on about.

As an industry we need evangelists such as you guys, just bear with us whilst the rest of us mortals get our heads around something you’ve spent 4years locked in a TMP cupboard doing – and doing with some impressive online advertising budgets from some clearly visionary clients.

:-)

[Matt]

Alex - I take your point in some ways but the measurable way of doing these things has been around for over 8 years now and I'm still amazed more people don't utilise it. Its got nothing to do with type of client or budget either I promise you. Oh and it was a basement not a cupboard ;-)

John - Welcome to the blog and thanks for your comments. If you guys are building a widget we'd gladly host one. In terms of NORAS and alternatives I suspect that will be a post of its own when the results come out shortly but in the meantime a quick 30 secs on why it doesn't work for me

1) I can't take anything to be truely independent that is published by a competitor

2) It doesn't really tell me what I need to know for media planning purposes

3) I get very bored of all the "we're number one" press releases from the sites that have no relation to whether they are going to be effective for my clients or not. Whether thats we're number one in the whole wide world from the generic sites or we have the biggest audience of mechanical engineers on the Isle of Skye from the niche sites

Matt